[Updated] France has become the latest major European market for Formula 1 to switch to a Pay TV model, as Canal + snapped up the rights starting this season. The 11th hour deal is exclusive, which means that long time free-to-air broadcaster TF1 is out of F1 after many years of association and it is another nail in the coffin for Free to Air broadcasters as purveyors of premium live sports. It also means that three of Europe’s largest markets for F1 coverage are now under the control of Pay TV, following the UK which switched to Sky in 2012 More…

Vijay Mallya, the co-owner of Sahara Force India F1 team, has come under intense pressure from 17 creditor banks in India, who have lost patience and announced they are calling loans on his failing Kingfisher Airlines business, which is $1.3 billion in debt. The airline has been grounded since October last year, the debts mounting up. And according to the Financial Times newspaper today, some of Mallya’s trophy assets are being targetted as banks look to recoup their losses, “Now that his creditors have run out of patience and are calling in loans to Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines, some of them More…

The first four races of the new season are set to feature plenty of interest and strategic challenges for the F1 teams as Pirelli announced today that it is making some changes to the tyre choices for those races. They have an aggressive plan for both Australia and Bahrain in particular, where there will be two steps between tyres and softer compounds used than before. So what does it all mean? Well here on JA on F1 we will be leading the way in online Strategy analysis once again this season, as we have for the last three years, and More…

The job of F1 commentator is never easy; certainly not as easy as many fans think it is. But this year there is a real challenge for the motormouths – spot the difference between the two Mercedes drivers at speed on a small TV monitor. The problem is that both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have a yellow crash helmet and even the design is similar. So telling them apart at distance is going to be really hard. The only way to tell them apart during Grand Prix weekends will be the roll hoops; the T shaped TV camera mounted More…

Lewis Hamilton is doing a great deal of his work in the media at the moment setting out his stall in the early stages of the Mercedes relationship. And an interview in today’s L’Equipe with Fred Ferret is a good example of how the 2008 world champion wants to draw some lines in the sand; to get some basic understandings out there, knowing that the world’s commentators, media and public will all have plenty of opinions and judgements on the rights and wrongs of his move down the grid, as he goes through the first year at the Mercedes team. More…

Ferrari has confirmed that it has hired veteran designer Rory Byrne, architect of the winning Benetton and Ferrari cars of the Michael Schumacher era, to work on its next F1 car, which will be to 2014 turbo rules. La Gazetta Sportiva says that Byrne, 69, was spotted at the F1 launch this year and told a German journalist his plans. Quizzed on this, the team has now confirmed the signing. Byrne retired from F1 and moved to Thailand a few years ago to run a scuba diving centre, but has maintained strong links with Ferrari. There is a very specific More…

The first F1 test of the 2013 season at Jerez provided little in the way of concrete pointers for the season that lies ahead; we do not know who is favourite for pole in Melbourne yet. But one would not expect to at this stage, as it was only the first test and the cars will change a lot before the season proper starts again with Melbourne qualifying on March 16. Many of the cars started the week looking like 2012 models, but the wind tunnel models will look quite different already. However, it is possible to read some trends More…

Kimi Raikkonen ensured Lotus became the only team to top the times on two days at Jerez as the Finn set the pace on an extended final day, which required a long break to fix a pot-hole. The fourth and final day at Jerez had to be extended due to the appearance of a pot-hole between Turns 10 and 11, which caused a fifty minute delay and required quick-drying cement. To compensate, the teams were given an extra half an hour of testing time. Raikkonen set the second fastest time of the week to narrowly deny Force India’s Reserve Driver More…

Formula 1 cars are prototypes and as such they are constantly changing and being evolved in the pursuit of performance. The first week of testing in Jerez has seen many teams racking up over a thousand kilometres on their new cars, first working on reliability then pushing new development parts onto the car looking for more speed. But what sort of thing are the engineers looking for and how can they see the difference between a new part that is working and one that is not? Here we offer a simple example to help readers get a better understanding. Downforce More…

Felipe Massa underlined Ferrari’s statement of intent by topping the times on the penultimate day of testing, in Jerez. He set the two fastest times of the week to end the day around a second clear of Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel. After two difficult days of unreliability for Mercedes, Rosberg managed to make up for lost time with 148 laps, or 655km of running; more than two race distances in one day. Ferrari have been one of the first teams to start bringing development parts to the car after starting tests on Tuesday with a fairly standard launch car. More…